This invention relates generally to means for exercising the hands and wrists and more particularly to such means especially useful for conditioning the fingers and wrists for piano playing without risk of injury to the hands or wrists through an improper and inefficient playing technique and with optimal quality, power and smoothness of the resulting musical sounds.
Prolonged playing of a musical instrument with a keyboard, such as the piano, with an improper technique has been known to result in injuries to the hands and wrists. such injuries are brought about by fatigue, tension and overstrained muscles occasioned by the improper technique. Such a technique is characterized by inefficient use of energy and time span and, in addition to leading to possible injury to the player, results in poor mastery of the piano or other instrument. No one has yet, to my knowledge, deviced any means of training present and future piano players to prepare them for proper playing to avoid injuries to their wrists and hands and produce high quality piano music. I have observed that many professional piano players, even concert pianists, use playing techniques that can result in hand or wrist injuries in later years. Thus, some form of exercise for such players to train their arms, wrists and fingers in a way to eliminate the risk of future injuries through reduction of the amount of physical energy expended in piano playing by the employment of a technique that subjects the wrists, fingers, etc., to minimal stress and punishment during such playing would be a boon to amateur and professional piano players alike. Such exercising means would also be helpful for those studying to play, or playing, musical instruments requiring similar movements of the hands and wrists to those required for piano playing. It would also be helpful for the retraining of pianists with injured hands, as a therapeutic aid for people with arthritic hands and as an aid in the overcombing of numbness of the hands due to to the prolonged wearing of a cast.